


Glitch in the System: Practice Makes Breakfast

by SystemGlitch



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 14:01:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12866037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SystemGlitch/pseuds/SystemGlitch
Summary: By K.Pretentious banter and omelettes happen.





	Glitch in the System: Practice Makes Breakfast

“—all I’m saying is that his dying act of contempt for the Marquise is  _clearly_  implied as redemptive.”

“You can say that all you’d like— chef’s knife, please — but Laclos’s intent that the novel function as a critique of the perversions of the Ancien Régime  _and_  the fact he dies terribly imply the contrary.”

Akande handed Widowmaker the requested knife, holding the blade safely between calloused fingertips as he huffed his disagreement. “He only said that was his intent after the public outcry over its salaciousness.  He wrote to titillate, nothing more.”

Accepting the knife, Widowmaker began cutting the spinach splayed across the cutting board before her, slicing it  _en Chiffonade_ by the handful with mechanical precision.

“Unverified,” she replied, the word flattened by her otherwise occupied attention. “The intent is apparent. We are talking in circles now, Akande.”

“How is it apparent?” Doomfist asked for the third time that morning, half-laughing his dismissal as he cracked egg after egg into a mixing bowl.

“First: in the entire premise of the story. Second: in the writing of his successors, particularly de Sade. Sordid,  _oui,_  but the criticism persists throughout a substantial portion of his  _oeuvre_. Consider _Le Président Mystifié_.”

Akande wrinkled his nose in disgust, glancing to the sniper beside him.“Do not talk to me about de Sade.”

“Why?”

“It has  _got_  to be a human resources issue.”

They paused, his dark eyes meeting her amber as a long note of silence stretched between them. On the mornings they were afforded time enough for literary discourse, they inevitably reached this point: Akande, drawing a line in the sand of their uncomfortably comfortable rapport despite their already having crossed it; Widowmaker, coolly ignoring it or, depending on the topic, acquiescing with an unsubtle air of smugness. She could never predict when that strange sense of misplaced formality would rear its head, and that alone made their occasional breakfast collaboration and the conversations therein all the more interesting. With so few indicators of the machinations informing his unflappable stoicism, those little tells were as poignant as they were fascinating.

This morning, she met his sudden obstinance with a quiet chuckle.

“What?” Akande asked suspiciously, broad hands dwarfing the egg held between them.

“We do not have a human resources department,” she smirked.

Doomfist opened his mouth to retort, but the soft, slow patter of sleep-heavy footsteps drew both their attention to the doorway where Sombra stood bleary-eyed and pajama clad, clutching Oso to her chest.

“You nerds know I can hear you all the way down the hall, right?” she grumbled, shuffling past the both of them toward the cabinet opposite the entrance.

“Good morning to you, too,” Akande quipped.

Rolling onto her toes to grab a mug, Sombra closed the cabinet doors and shouldered her way between her colleagues, concluding her pilgrimage toward caffeination by leaning Oso against the backsplash with a delicacy others would more readily afford small children or fine china.

“ _Salut_ , Oso,” Widowmaker murmured, eyes flicking upward in acknowledgement of the stuffed animal now supervising her work. Though she offered no such greeting its owner, she acknowledged the sudden presence at her side by leaning into it, cool, bare shoulders meeting the unfathomably soft weave of the hacker’s sweatshirt.

“You gave her a  _knife_?” Sombra asked in mock horror, pouring herself a mug of coffee. Leaving her opposite side for the stove, Akande merely shrugged as he began adding bacon to a heated skillet, a scalding hiss heralding the end of each slice’s short, successful journey.

“We gave her a rifle, too.”

With as cryptic a smile as she could muster, Widowmaker set the knife aside and relocated the spinach from the cutting board to a nearby bowl. Replacing it with a few handfuls of mushrooms, she started on them one by one, dicing them evenly before adding them to the greens as she went.

“What’re you making?” Sombra asked, watching the sniper’s motions with interest that seemed to grow in concurrence with each sip of coffee.

“Omelettes,” Widowmaker said. “Bacon, Swiss, spinach, mushrooms obviously. Sun-dried tomatoes, maybe. If I am feeling whimsical.”

“You’re so good to me.”

“Who says it’s for you?” Akande asked over his shoulder.

“I’ll fight you.”

“I’d like you to try.”

“If you are going to wrestle, you are going to do it somewhere else. I have a knife,” the sniper interrupted pointedly, breaking from her work to lift the implement in question to better underscore that fact. “You,” she continued, leveling it in Akande’s direction, “finish the bacon so I can use the stove. And you—,” another pause, this time to gesture to Sombra, “can finish preparing the vegetables so _I_  can take a coffee break.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” Sombra asked incredulously, hands raised palms-out as Widowmaker offered her the knife.

“Hardly,” the assassin replied, deadpan. Sombra took it with obvious reluctance, setting her mug beside Oso and before turning her attention to the remaining mushrooms with a mix of dread and resignation. Pressing a kiss against the shaved side of her head, Widowmaker followed in the hacker’s earlier footsteps, procuring a mug of her own and filling it. She watched the other woman from the corner of her eye, prolonging the action with pointed interest as Sombra sliced one mushroom, then another — her motions slow, unpracticed, and unsteady. Canting her head to one side, Widowmaker idly considered the series of questions and observations that crept to mind: did Sombra not cook? Clearly not with enough frequency to garner any proficiency with basic cuts. What did she eat on her own? Cereal?  _Hopefully not just cereal._

These were small things, little questions she’d neither thought nor had the occasion to ask. Sombra was a mystery, the life which predated her time with Talon obscured in significant parts and otherwise only glimpsed in the occasional, unpredictable anecdote. Widowmaker never pried, not even as their relationship shifted in scope: Sombra would tell her what she wanted, and that was quite sincerely good enough. Still, such small details were, if nothing else, interesting, and with what small degree of care she offered the hacker, so, too, did she extend curiosity as to the inner workings of her life.

As she watched, she noted a familiar frustration darkening Sombra’s expression: the knit of her brow and the frown that tugged at her mouth; the occasional colorful obscenity grunted between clenched teeth. Widomaker recognized it from almost a month ago, from their first attempt at taming the estate’s extensive gardens. This much she was familiar with: when the hacker wasn’t good at something, she spiraled - hard.

“Here,” the she offered, taking a long sip of coffee before setting her mug beside Sombra’s. “Let me help.”

Sidling up behind the hacker, she took each of her hands in her own, positioning them accordingly. It was more familiarity than she preferred to demonstrate in Akande’s presence, and that alone sent a transient rush of warmth creeping along her neck and cheeks; still, this was educational, and she brushed off that shyness with practiced, reflexive ease. Sombra glanced over her shoulder, meeting the sniper’s eyes with curiosity.

“Not sure help will do much,” she muttered.

“It will,” Widowmaker insisted. “Now,” she continued, firming her grip just enough to redirect the other woman’s attention to the task at hand. “For an omelette, you’ll want to perform a _Brunoise_  dice - the smallest possible cut; this allows us to better mix the ingredients into the eggs. To start: cut the mushrooms into squares. It will make the subsequent cuts easier.”

She guided the other woman’s hands as she spoke so they performed the action in unison; together, they reduced a handful of mushrooms to petite cubes, setting the discarded, smaller bits in the bowl with the spinach to clear additional space on the cutting board. “ _Parfait_. Now we julienne them. Thin cuts, a millimeter or two wide.”

She could feel tensile muscle tightening beneath her palms, the firmness borne of frustration resulting in a too-tight grip and uneven, slanted cuts. Sombra’s rigidity was practically its own aura, belying her displeasure at the imperfection of her work. Once, twice Widowmaker considered offering further instruction, but knew from experience that too much interjection would only worsen her mood. Instead, she simply maintained the contact between them, moving in tandem as she lowered her head enough to nestle one cheek against the other woman’s temple.

“Looks like shit,” Sombra sighed as she finished slicing the remaining mushrooms into thin strips. “Sorry.”

“Do not apologize. This will sound odd coming from me, but it does not have to be perfect. It is going to get put into some eggs and eaten.”

Clucking her tongue, Sombra chuckled bitterly. “Where is Widowmaker and what have you done with her?”

“You should ask her about the first time she tried making omelettes,” Akande smirked as he plated the bacon, patting it dry with a paper towel.

“Oh?” Sombra asked, eyebrows raised.

Widowmaker only shook her head, giving the hacker an encouraging nudge. “Finish these and I will tell you,” she insisted. “All you have to do is slice them in the opposite direction.”

Rolling her eyes, Sombra returned to the last of her work with the sniper’s assistance. “Loosen your grip, _cherie_ ,” she whispered gently, “and do not hold your breath.” The spy complied with some effort, leaning into the motion as she relaxed ever so slightly.

“You going to tell me about that first time?” she asked distractedly.

“Mm. Gabriel was cleaning it off the ceiling for a week,” Widowmaker answered, gradually relinquishing her grip as Sombra settled into the last of her task. While she still worked slowly, the repetitious, cyclical movements which comprised this particular assignment soon evened into something almost like fluidity as she eased into her work. Silence settled over the kitchen, Sombra cutting, Akande tearing the bacon into bite-sized pieces, and Widowmaker simply watching as the other woman allowed herself the same imperfections she only found acceptable in the kitchen.

It was strange, that she minded less here. In the field, precision and perfection comprised the razor-thin line between life and death. She was always two steps ahead of herself and three ahead of her mark - always thinking, always running, always calculating trajectories and wind drift and velocity and distance. A good sniper could juggle two of these; she juggled them all.

Cooking was different — if not out of necessity then out of the idle curiosity she harbored in the face of such a remarkably mundane challenge. Though she harbored little intent to pursue it seriously, Gabriel’s tendency toward a prepackaged diet of convenience - a habit she suspected had worsened in Akande’s absence - led her to commit to a culinary self-education. Progress was slow at first, her first serious attempts at preparing anything more complex than grilled cheese marked by insufficient portions and almost-fires and the occasional, mortifying brush with food poisoning. On those nights - at least the ones where illness wasn’t a looming threat - she would apologetically procure some less officious fast fare - a tacit apology for time and patience wasted on Gabriel’s behalf.

She stuck with it, practicing with the same unflinching dedication she exercised in every other aspect of life and finding it paired well with other habits: a prelude to an evening in, a coda to early morning calisthenics. Eventually, she stumbled into proficiency despite only having so much time to dedicate to what she grudgingly recognized as a hobby. Luckily, aspirations were the last thing on her mind; she simply found the practice, variability, and room for experimentation strangely comfortable. Nothing was ever the same twice and nothing was ever perfect, but the outcomes, at this point, were almost always enjoyable.

“ _Es todo!_ ” Sombra chirped, triumphantly slamming the knife down and exchanging it for her mug. Widowmaker peered over the hacker’s shoulder to appraise the fruits of her labor.

“That is a lot of very small cubes,” she observed dryly, trying and failing to stifle the grin threatening the corner of her mouth.

“And?” Sombra asked, one hand drifting back toward the knife.

“You did well,  _cherie_. They are beautiful small cubes.”

The hacker shrugged. “I didn’t hate that.”

“You will only get better with practice,” Widowmaker said, setting an affirming hand on one shoulder. “I can always use a hand in the kitchen.”

“That’s asking a lot,  _araña_ ,” Sombra grinned, turning to face her. “Tall order.”

“I am certain I will find a way to make it worth your while.”


End file.
